The Therapeutic Parenting Podcast

This week COECT's CEO Sarah Naish talks from personal experience about the strain placed on a relationship when a couple adopts or fosters traumatized children.

Parents can quickly experience isolation within the relationship itself. This is especially the case if one becomes the main carer and the other is not around enough to witness the difficulties that arise.

About 1 in 3 relationships fail in such families unless help is sought.

As Sarah says, raising traumatized children can test relationships to the limit but she presents three effective strategies to combat the problem.

COECT also holds workshops and webinars to help couples put these strategies into practice.

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COECT, The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTrauma

Telephone – 01453 519000 

Email – [email protected] 

Website - www.coect.co.uk

Remember the child in your school class who was the fidgety one?

Or the one who always had their hand up but was ignored by the teacher because they made apparently stupid remarks? 

Or the one that seemed to know exactly what was going on everywhere else but was paying no attention at all to the lesson? 

You wouldn’t have known it at the time, but this could have been a sign of a traumatized child experiencing extreme stress. 

Making the transition from home to school or from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2 can present enormous difficulties for children who have suffered adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

In this episode, senior teacher and adoptive mother Sami Byrne – who’s also a Therapeutic Lead for the National Association of Therapeutic Parents (NATP) - helps us understand what they are going through.  

She gives preparation and coping strategies to prepare children for all the different stages they have to confront during their school lives.

These are tried and tested methods that she has used successfully with her own children and which form part of the document she co-authored with Jane Mitchell entitled The School Transitions Pack available on request from COECT (see below for contact details).

Sami also recommends Rosie Jefferies and Sarah Naish’s book “William Wobbly and the Very Bad Day”.   

Other recommended resources include "Harry and the Dinosaurs Go To School"  and  "Topsy and Tim Start School" 

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COECT, The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTrauma

Telephone – 01453 519000 

Email – [email protected] 

Website - www.coect.co.uk

If your child is from a traumatized background you may be asking yourself why they are seem so super sensitive to everything.

Why are they so watchful and guarded? What are they afraid of?

Why do they seem to focus on matters of peripheral importance when they should be concentrating on their lessons or simply on going to sleep?

Why can't they just relax?

Our expert guest this week, Glynis Hough, makes a welcome return to explain what is happening in a child's mind to make it hypervigilant and to make its behaviour disregulated.

She tells us to practice P.A.C.E. (patience, acceptance, curiousity and empathy) until we're blue in the face.

And she suggest a number of other excellent coping strategies.

To help preserve your sanity, she suggests joining one of the NATP's Listening Circles where parents can seek advice and share their stories.

COECT, The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTrauma

Telephone – 01453 519000 

Email – [email protected] 

Website - www.coect.co.uk

It is often really difficult for the professionals involved to know if a group of traumatized siblings should be kept together or separated once they've been removed from their birth families. 

There are so many factors to weigh in the balance such as:

• Do the siblings depend on each other and have they formed an unbreakable bond? 
• Or is there intense rivalry and jealousy between them?
• Have the boys been encouraged to think they are more important than the girls? 
• Will learned patterns of behaviour make re-parenting and learning new cultural norms an uphill battle?
• Is an older child violent to a younger one? 
• Does one child show highly sexualised behaviour to another?

How can a parent meet the different needs of each individual child within a sibling group?

And how can parents successfully raise traumatized siblings so that they retain happy memories of their childhood?

Social worker, academic and mother of two sibling boys, Jessica Jackson, talks from her own challenging experience with plentiful advice on how to overcome problems.

(Jessica recommends using Theraplay techniques for therapeutic games the whole family can play and enjoy)

You can find out more about COECT and the NATP's training, listening circles and support here https://www.naotp.com/

The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTrauma

Telephone – 01453 519000 

Email – [email protected] 

Website - www.coect.co.uk

Raising a traumatised child to adulthood is fraught with challenges.

But if you get Jane Mitchell's Super Strategies in place from the very start, you'll find them a great support.

They form a template that help you face up all the problems that come your way in a consistent, predictable and reliable way that ultimately help your child feel safe.

Above all they help your child to learn that they matter to you. 

We're talking about Super Strategies such as:

• Pausing
• Being Playful 
• Showing Acceptance 
• Being Curious
• Expressing Empathy
• Practising Parental Presence
• Relationship Repair

You can find out more about our training, listening circles and support here https://www.naotp.com/


The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTrauma

Telephone – 01453 519000 

Email – [email protected] 

Website - www.coect.co.uk

In the first edition of Series 2, you'll hear plenty of therapeutic parenting strategies for coping with the inevitable loneliness and isolation experienced by the parents of traumatised children.

COECT's CEO Sarah Naish talks about her own challenging experience bringing up five siblings from a traumatised background on her own after the break-up of her marriage.

She tells us how other mums distanced themselves from her family because of her adopted children's difficult behaviour. Sarah became increasingly isolated and desperate for empathetic listeners willing to simply listen to her troubles.

All this eventually prompted her to found what has become COECT and the NATP to provide all kinds of training and empathetic help for troubled adoptive and foster parents.

The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTrauma

Telephone – 01453 519000 

Email – [email protected] 

Website - www.coect.co.uk

As a trailblazer in the field of therapeutic parenting, COECT founder Sarah Naish has made a profound difference to the lives of many struggling foster and adoptive parents.

She also runs fostering agencies in England and Wales where her effective strategies are applied.

The agencies empower families to make a success of fostering even when things appear to be at their most difficult.

This week Sarah tells us what defines a therapeutic fostering agency and how her own ones provide wraparound support when problems arise.

Learn about how the True Fostering Agency and the new SAfER Fostering Agency in Wales   successfully guide parents through difficulties that include false allegations, compassion fatigue and mental health issues.

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The links Sarah refers to in this episode are:
https://www.truefostering.com
and
https://saferfostering.org.uk

The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTrauma

Telephone – 01453 519000 

Email – [email protected] 

Website - www.coect.co.uk

The damage inflicted on a child as a result of domestic violence - be it physical or emotional - can have a catastrophic effect on their young lives. 

In this episode, Rachel Cawthorn, helps us to understand why this is the case and what physiological changes take place in a child as a result of this abuse. 

Rachel is a social work student and was a senior practitioner in substance misuse for 15 years.   She also experienced domestic violence as a child and, as a result, entered into two toxic relationships as a young adult which took their toll on her four children. 

All this is now firmly in Rachel's past but no one could be better placed to understand the damage inflicted by this kind of abuse. 

This is why her advice on how to apply therapeutic parenting's kind and gentle techniques is worth heeding. 

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The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTrauma

Telephone – 01453 519000 

Email – [email protected] 

Website - www.coect.co.uk

"Bazza" is a professional social worker with in-depth experience of working in the family courts protecting the rights - and the futures - of children. 

For good professional reasons, she has to remain anonymous. 

But on this podcast edition she provides us with an invaluable insight into how the family courts arrive at their decisions. 

Decisions which make fundamental differences to people's lives and most especially, to traumatized children's lives.

"Bazza" explains about the research, the soul-seeking, and the genuine desire to do the right thing that goes into the court's pronouncements.  

Our first male guest of this series joins us on this podcast edition to talk about a father’s experience of therapeutic parenting. 

Kinship Carer, Iain Fogg and his wife have cared for the daughter he refers to on the podcast as “kiddo” (not her real name), for the last two years.   

We learn about the so-called honeymoon period and its aftermath, secondary trauma and compassion fatigue. 

Iain also discusses the grief he underwent for the loss of the idealized vision he imagined life as a foster father would be like. 

He presents a stark but ultimately hope-filled story not of the the kind of dad he wanted to be but of the kind of dad he needed to be. 

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In this episode Iain talked about the film “Instant Family” as the one that originally inspired him and his wife to investigate fostering further. 

Iain’s Instagram account is called “TherapeuticDad” and he welcomes all new followers.

The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTrauma

Telephone – 01453 519000 

Email – [email protected] 

Website - www.coect.co.uk